


Once more

by esama



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 05:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12450588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: Unto the breach (with a feeling)





	Once more

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed as always.

There's no mistaking the feel of the Force. "It's a Sith construction alright," Obi-Wan says, his voice muffled slightly under the helmet as he peers at the structure through a set of macro binoculars. He can almost feel the malice that lingers around the pyramid – and why is it that Sith temples almost always end up being found either buried under existing Jedi temples… or in beautiful, lush jungles?

This one is in a jungle – the whole planet is almost entirely covered in the jungle, really. The temple's sharp point only barely shows through the jungle canopy, but there is no mistaking its artificial shape any more than there is mistaking the Force. Both are very strong, the Force in its darkness, the temple with its strict lines.

"Anything on the scanners?" Obi-Wan asks, turning to Cody.

"Nothing, sir, but static," Cody says, looking up from the said scanner. "If the Intel is correct there shouldn't be anyone here. I'd like to send some men ahead to scout, just in case."

"I'll be going with them, you realise," Obi-Wan says with an arched brow – which Cody can't even see, through the helmet. Because of the toxic atmosphere of Laisser 5, it's not just dangerous to breathe in there – but it can corrode your skin too with long exposure, and it wouldn't take long at all for the air to damage your eyes.

So Obi-Wan is, once more, in full Jedi armour – the type they'd used for one hot second after Geonosis, and then started systematically discarding bits and pieces of because they were more hindrance than benefit to the Jedi. Modelled strongly after the clone armour, it is heavy, good thirty kilos of composite plastoid, and though Obi-Wan still wears more of it than most Jedi do, he isn't used to the full set. The helmet is – distracting.

It does offer great deal of environmental protection, however – with couple of tanks of air, it works pretty much perfectly as environmental protection suit, if an unnecessarily militant and heavy one.

"Sir," Cody says, not quite disagreeing.

"That there is a Sith structure, Sith _temple_ possibly," Obi-Wan says and shakes his head, since his usual physical language of expressions is unusable. "There is no telling what it might do to your men, to get exposed to whatever still lingers there. We're still good two klick out and it already feels foul to me."

"We'll have men circle around at whatever you consider safe distance, sir," Cody compromises. "See if they can see any signs of activity, movement – landing pads."

Obi-Wan considers it. Well, thankfully they have some time, and one shouldn't rush into places of darkness unprepared. "Alright, commander," he says. "Have your men stay at least a klick out – and if they start feeling any bouts of irritation or agitation, they should round back immediately."

"Yes, sir," Cody says, determined – and relieved – and turns to address the group of clones waiting for orders. "Waxer, Boil – with me."

Obi-Wan lifts the binoculars back up and looks at the temple again. Though the trees around it are large, they aren't as tall as the rest of the trees - they've grown twisted, rather than straight. Vines hang heavy on their crooked branches and crawl up their spindly trunks. Nothing on the temple itself, though, as far as he can see. There are plenty of surfaces for plant life to take root in – certainly more than enough crevices for moss… but the temple is completely spotless.

The Dark side the thing is bathed with must kill all life that tries to take root on it.

Lowering the binoculars Obi-Wan lifts a hand idly towards his chin and then curls his fingers awkwardly at the edge of the helmet. Helmets. He very much prefers it when the clones wear them, any layer of protection between them and whatever comes after them is only a good thing – but he's definitely not getting used to wearing one anytime soon.

It doesn't help that when they were designing these armours, they wanted to make them _better_ than the clone armours – so, the helmet hud is packed with twice as much technology as the clone helmet. He's constantly being fed with environmental data, proximity scans, his own life sign and status, and there is a finder keeping track of all the clones around him. All of it is information he already gets from the Force – the only thing useful here is the comlink channels, not having to talk to his wrist is handy, but still.

The helmet had been the first thing to go when Jedi had been kitted with their own personal armour. Some had tried them once, and never again. Too much unnecessary noise and distraction.

Somewhere behind him, Cody sends a handful of men out on their quieter speed bikes. They speed past Obi-Wan and towards the Sith structure, splitting up soon after and veering into two different directions, to pincer the temple between them no doubt. Moment later, they're gone, disappeared into the jungle.

"Sir," Cody comes to his side again. "What are we hoping to find here?"

"With any luck, nothing at all. Aside from that… Our mission is to pre-emptively disarm Dooku," Obi-Wan says with a sigh and clips the macro binoculars to his waist, where they attach to the armour's utility belt with a magnetic snap. "This is the first Sith site we've found that we're fairly sure Dooku doesn't know about. Every other place we discover, he's been through first. It's only matter of time before he finds this one, too, and if there's something here to be found, we're hoping to find it and remove it first."

"Right," Cody says with a brisk nod and eyes the distant temple. "It looks old."

"Thousands of years old, easily," Obi-Wan agrees and folds his arms – that at least the armour doesn't hinder, much. "There was a time when Sith were far more numerous in the galaxy, spread out through out it, spreading their evil where ever they go. Over the ages since most of their ancient sites have been destroyed or converted to better purposes, but… if Sith are something, it's resilient."

"Like a stain you just can't get rid of," Cody agrees.

"Quite," Obi-Wan agrees with a smile and taps a finger against his shoulder guard. "When we get down there, I need your men to keep close eye on your bio scans. If you start picking up anything unusual… I need to know about it."

"I'll let the men know," Cody agrees.

It takes about a half an hour for the scouts to return, with good news. No signs of activity, not within this millennia anyway.

"There are signs of other structures there, buried under the trees. Roads, bridges, houses maybe," Waxer says. "But the trees growing on them are massive, easily six hundred and more years old. No sign of anything more recent than that, sir, we couldn't find so much as a snapped twig."

"Hmm," Obi-Wan answers, frowning a little. "This place might have been inhabited once."

"People lived in this poison, sir?" Boil asks a little dubiously.

"Chances are it wasn't so poisonous back then," Obi-Wan says with a shake of his head and turns to the Sith structure. "Few decades is enough to change a planet's biosphere – and after centuries and millennia…" And having a Sith structure so mired in the Dark side had probably only sped up the process.

Obi-Wan shakes his head and looks around at the men. "Time to move out. The faster we get there and search there site, the faster we can get out of here – but take extreme caution. In all likelihood the site is heavily trapped. Once we make it to the temple, I will be taking the lead and I want your men to move in only when I tell you to. Got it?"

"Sir, yes sir!"

As they approach the temple, the clones pick up long wooden sticks and fist sized stones as they go. Obi-Wan glances at them and says nothing. By now, they all have their own ways of testing for traps and while he doubts a thrown stone will be enough to secure a trap, it definitely wouldn't hurt.

"Cody," Obi-Wan calls. "I need your arm."

"Sir," Cody says and steps beside him without question, offering him his elbow. Obi-Wan rests a hand on it and then, trusting his commander to lead him safely, closes his eyes breathes in and out slowly. It's – awkward to do this in armour, with it's mechanical air filtration and all the unnecessary noise of electronics – but Obi-Wan is by now used to meditating on his feet and though it takes a bit longer to fall into the soothing embrace of Force, he manages it.

The Force here is _foul_. It's like the water of a still pond, full of pollutants and twisted weeds, rotting and stinking the very air around it. It wouldn't surprise Obi-Wan in the least if the Sith Temple really was the source of this planet's cascade of toxicity – that's how strong its corrupting influence is.

There is… an untouched quality to it, though. The polluted surface is perfectly still as he prods at it – nothing has stirred these foul waters in a very long time. His presence is enough to disturb them now, and the foul Force eddies around him, swirling into idle, evil little whirlpools of malice. If someone Force sensitive had been here, it would be plainly obvious.

That is good to know – but not what he wanted to find out. Obi-Wan loses all contact with his body as he searches the Force, and even the sensation of walking fades away. If he collapses, he can't tell – but if he does he trusts that Cody would catch him and the clones would carry him. He doesn't do this often, but it's often enough that they know how to handle it.

Now, traps. Are there traps? With this much foul intent about, it feels like everything is a trap here, and it most likely it – the whole planet is one big toxic trap. But anything more immediate? Will the floors collapse under them, will the walls spew out poisonous dart at them, will lasers shoot out and lightning spark and incinerate them?

Yes, yes, and yes – and more. The Sith Temple offers him a thousand terrible deaths in thousand terrible traps, whispering of his doom, whispering of snares to break his feet with, of spikes to skewer his body in, of spears and knifes and blades aplenty to tear his flesh on. Some of its just intimidation – but some of it, Obi-Wan knows, would be very real. But which is a taunt and illusion, and which is a real, present danger?

Obi-Wan breathes in and out and then returns to his body. Cody has an arm around his waist now and is supporting him on the way down a mossy, muddy slope. They're perhaps hundred meters out, now.  "Thank you, Cody," Obi-Wan says.

"Sir," Cody says and after making sure he's not about to fall flat to his face, releases him. "Anything?"

"Lot of things," Obi-Wan sighs, and slides down the slope, Cody quick at his heels. "No people here other than us, so we can count that out at least for now. There will be traps, several most likely. I couldn't quite tell where and what types, however. We must be cautious."

"Yes, sir," Cody says.

The temple looms ahead – and it is even bigger close up than Obi-Wan had assumed. Almost hundred meters tall, the pyramid stands amidst the jungle canopy like a great, forbidding monolith, and as far as they can see upfront, there is no entrance – the pyramid is smooth on all sides.

It is also surrounded by an area of _decay_ where nothing seems to grow.

"We have some explosives, sir, should we blow our way in?" Cody asks.

"No," Obi-Wan says with a frown. "The temple will most likely retaliate if we do, and chances are it will not work. Hmm…" It is entirely possible that one needs to use the Dark side of the Force to get into the temple.

Tough luck, Obi-Wan has no Dark side to give it.

"Let's see if we can find where an entrance might have been," Obi-Wan says. "If there's a road leading up to the temple, a door will be on that side."

There is no road – there is a square, however. Through the ruins, they can almost figure out how the area was, once upon a time, arranged. The Sith Temple had stood as if on a pedestal, and in front of it had been a great square – some of it still remains. The Sith temple had stood in middle of ancient city, it looks like, at the very centre of it, it's pulsing, dark heart. Obi-Wan had figured it would be something like it already, but it's strange to have it confirmed.

Once upon a time, there was a society here, a whole people, ruled by the Dark side of the Force.

Shaking the eerie thought from his head, Obi-Wan examines the front of the temple – just as smooth and featureless as the rest of it. The make of the walls is angular – like an enormous staircase, all around, leading up and to nowhere. Close up, it's not the sturdiest of constructions – having seen the ancient structures build by the Massassi of Yavin 4, this place looks more like a child's attempt of a pyramid in comparison.

Yavin 4's great temples are only that, though, and whatever Force that swirls around them is only that of a lively forest planet. Here…

Obi-Wan swallows and then widens his stance a little, holding out his hands. "Everyone step back, I will attempt to open it," he says, and once he's sure the clones have taken the necessary precaution – Cody stays too close, but he always does – Obi-Wan breathes in and out and then _pushes_ , searching for an opening.

It's… almost uneasily easy to find. At a Force push, he can feel _give_ in the temple's construction – nothing that you could find with manual methods, but which easily parts under the more wide spread push of his Force. In the front, there is a whole section of wall without any sort of adhesives. Great slaps of stone, each weighing a ton or more, that sit in place held by their own weight, and not by mortar.

Obi-Wan's heel grinds into the dirt and his shoulders strain as he pushes against them with his Force. As they watch, the enormous stone slaps shift back, falling to their secondary positions as Obi-Wan forces them back and to where they go the easiest – in and inside to the walls, into slots awaiting them. It takes effort, but moment later… they have a way into the pyramid.

"Flare," Obi-Wan calls, still holding the slaps with Force just in case he needs to pull them back to block the temple entrance.

Immediately a clone moves forward with a flare gun, and fires it into the dark opening. It leaves a trail of sparks as it goes in, which light the way until its momentum is halted by a back wall. Bouncing back a little, the flare lands onto the floor inside, and nothing happens.

"Fifty four meters, twenty eight centimetres sir," the clone reports, checking the flare gun's read out. "That'd be fifty meters from the entrance to the wall."

Obi-Wan waits, feeling the Force move – but the temple sits still. This wasn't enough to trigger a trap. "Good," he says and releases the stone slaps. "I want men to stay here and cover the entrance – we don't know how sturdy this place is, and whether a trap might collapse the entrance, so I want you to use something to prop it open. Cody –"

"General," Cody says, stepping to his side. "I'm coming in with you."

Obi-Wan hesitates and then sighs. Sometimes he misses the times when Cody was still shiny and new – and oh so eager to please. Cody's far more capable these days, with experience and all the self assuredness it gives him, and Obi-Wan greatly prefers it – but at the same time he really wishes he could still order him to stay behind, no questions asked.

Favouritism is a dangerous thing, Kenobi, he thinks to himself, glad that Cody can't see his face. Then he nods. "Very well, commander," he says, and turns to the temple. "Stay twenty steps behind me and follow my lead."

"Yes, sir," Cody says sharply and orders watch for the temple entrance.

While the men staying behind quickly get to work propping the entrance open with nearby stone pillars and pieces of wood, Obi-Wan takes his lightsaber and lights it. Its light is little comfort, when facing this darkness but at least it's something.

Together, General Kenobi and the Ghost Company enter the Sith Temple – and are never seen again.


End file.
